This interesting collection of essays on medieval romance, edited by Neil Cartlidge, stems from the Biennial Medieval Romance Conference held in Dublin in 2004. The boundaries which the essays address are not geographical or political borders, nor even those between this world and the next, or this world and the Other. Rather the landscapes of romance are psychological and their boundaries moral and spiritual, though the contemporary is often mapped onto both ancient geography and history. Nevertheless, the genre has "a tendency to depict topographies through which the contours of the real can sometimes be perceived" (9); the parameters of the genre are troubling and complex, Cartlidge suggests.
The collection begins with an essay by Helen Cooper, "When Romance Comes True," which lucidly charts four phenomena typical of romance's engagement with reality: romance-authors may compose to explain retrospectively what is occurring in the present; romance practices may be recreated or imitated in reality; cultural changes work to create or alter romance as genre, and, finally, historical events can be construed as the stuff of romance, and thus come to be narrated as if that is what they are. Having set out these four points of contact between romance and "reality," Cooper neatly exemplifies them with reference to origin myths, such as the story of Melusine; with the creation of the Order of the Garter and the Round Table at Winchester; with the impact of primogeniture and of church teachings on consent in marriage on story arcs, and finally how the story of the pretender Perkin Warbeck was shaped by romance conventions. Elegantly crafted, this essay makes its points with economy; "history is romance written by the victors," Cooper avers (27).
The next essay, by Ros Field, traces the development of the critical term "The Matter of Britain," in parallel with, but much later than the genuine medieval concepts of the "Matters" of Greece, Rome and France. Field locates the term's invention in 1906 and notes its relevance for medieval study in America. She distinguishes the Matter of Britain from the other Matters, noting that, unlike the original Matters, it has no European-wide currency, nor does it exist within an independent intertextual universe; its characters must always be introduced anew. The "Matter of Britain" is revealed as a critical concept which belongs rather to "the discourse of history--not the history of literature but rather the history of scholarship and the history of the perception of Englishness in literature" (39).
Marianne Ailes and Phillipa Hardman continue the discussion of Englishness in the next essay, entitled "How English are the English Charlemagne Romances?," finding that the English adaptations of the Charlemagne material are faster-paced than the originals, and tidy up narrative inconsistencies. Moreover, the conflict between a French and Christian "Us" and a pagan, Saracen "Them" has been subjected to a process of supranationalization in the English texts; the term "franceis" or its derivatives has largely disappeared, the "Us" of the English versions is predominantly Christian, noble, but not especially French. Ailes and Hardman suggest that the interest in Saracen conversion in the English versions chimes with lay theological interests in the later Middle Ages, a context confirmed by manuscript evidence.
The English view of the French is also the subject of Elizabeth Berlings' account of the Sege of Melayne, a less-well-known poem which she compares with Richard Coer de Lyon in its suggestion that the French are ineffectual in their campaigns in the Holy Land and need to learn from the vigour and brutality of the English. Berlings views the poem as parodic, designed to poke fun "at the French, their epics and the Charlemagne romances" (70). A series of comparisons with romance topoi employed elsewhere with serious intent is invoked; not every reader will be convinced that the Sege of Melayne's parodic intention is sustained. The notion of boundaries as generic or nationalistic might have been clarified here, while the terms "euphuistic" and "euphemistic" are also confused (66).
Simon Meecham-Jones' substantial essay on The Song of Dermot and the Normans in Ireland has no difficulty in demonstrating its relevance to the kinds of interaction between romance and the real adumbrated in Cooper's opening essay. Though the romance in question has been characterised as "an Anglo-Norman doggerel history of the conquest," Meecham-Jones makes a spirited, if long-winded, case for re-reading the text as utilising oral-popular stylistic conventions, rather than failing to show a knowledge of learned or vernacular texts. Meecham-Jones argues that the poet makes use of "romance norms" to fill the ethical void which the Norman campaign in Ireland otherwise displays, and assimilates the Song to the notion of art imitating life imitating art. Meecham-Jones employs Cooper's concept of romance 'memes' to good effect, strengthening the case for understanding the text in terms of a different kind of romance aesthetic.
Elizabeth Williams discussion of the late prose Olyuer of Castylle by Philippe de Camus demonstrates how folktale plots, romance norms, and historical memories (perhaps drawn from Froissart) combine in this multi-local work which moves between England, Spain and Ireland. Throughout the text a scattering of names and other details offer parallels between the plot and actual events of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although these have been noted before, Williams offers a plausible suggestion that some Irish details may have come from the chronicle of Jean de Wavrin, a contemporary of Camus at the Burgundian court. Arlyn Diamond's investigation of The Sege of Jerusalem, preserved in nine manuscripts, testifies to the appeal of its "vindictive piety." How can its apparent success in fulfilling readerly desire be accounted for? Diamond points to the understanding of war as an unparalleled source of nobility and notes the porosity of boundaries between romance and religious history, especially when The Sege is read in the context of alliterative romance tradition and with the understanding that the Jews are depicted as brave and worthy enemies.
Rob Rouse analyses two related motifs found in archetypal form in Havelok: the "peace of the roads" trope and "the hanging golden object" which no one dares steal. Rouse traces the earliest uses of the two tropes, denoting on one hand the "rex pacificus" and on the other the king's authority, and shows that they are Europe-wide shared motifs with a wide currency in chronicle. Laura Ashe considers the absence of a ME lexical term for hero, and the corresponding weakness of the concept in Insular literature, in contrast with Old English hæleð. Ashe demonstrates the circularity of the kind of heroism evidenced in Arthurian texts: knights are engaged in "the creation of heroism itself, in what we might call a pure form: a hero admired by an audience, created by the audience's willingness to admire" (138-9). The romance hero is cut loose from service to king or country; "worship," in Malory's terminology, is desired purely for itself. Ashe argues that the distinctively English version of kingship, found in such romances as Havelok and drawing on a powerful historical memory of Anglo-Saxon law and unity, creates a response to the absence of the hero as concept. Ashe's essay has a scope and ambition marking it as one of the most outstanding contributions in this collection.
The last three pieces look more narrowly at different romances. Judith Weiss analyses Boeve de Haumtone, originating at the point of transition between chanson de geste and romance, noting some perhaps parodic elements: snoring and comic giants. Weiss suggests borrowings from Fierebras, the Guillaume cycle (for chanson de geste) and Ipomedon, plausibly suggesting that within the close-knit Anglo-Norman aristocracy narratives might pass between families, "serving as inspiration for the poets they employed" (59). In "Rewriting Divine Favour," Ivana Djordjevic examines the different ways in which God manifests an interest in Bevis and Amis, showing a distinct shift in such portrayals which is evidenced from around 1200. In the earlier versions of the two tales, supernatural voices, rather than angels or the Almighty himself, communicate with the heroes; over time God becomes more approachable and more inclined to take an interest in human affairs, reflecting the development of affective piety among the romances' lay audience. As Boeve is rewritten in various continental contexts, rationalisation appears; "the miraculous has become the quotidian, but by the same token the quotidian has become miraculous" (173). The book concludes with Corinne Saunders' survey of the different ways in which illness and healing signify across a range of texts, including Amis and Amiloun, Sir Orfeo and Sir Gowther. Women feature as healers, harnessing a knowledge which sometimes borders on the magical; the boundary between sickness and health is a domain in which romance authors create "flashpoints where human, other-worldly and the divine may intersect" (190), Saunders concludes.
The conference which gave rise to this collection was clearly a productive one. More perhaps could have been done editorially to link together some of the essays on related themes, and certain papers might have been expanded beyond a conference-paper length focus on a single critical problem in order to return the detailed observations to the larger context of boundaries and their meaning. Helen Cooper's essay, originally a lecture given in association with the conference, might have served as a unifying template for the volume. Despite the unevenness of the collection, an unevenness typical of volumes originating as conference proceedings, there is enough substantial work here, investigating a wide range of subtypes of romance, to make a significant contribution to the study of Insular, non-Arthurian romance.